Yeats's Nations

Gender, Class, and Irishness

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by Marjorie Howes

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published January 1999, 249 pages, paper

ISBN 0521645271

Howes' study is the first sustained attempt to examine Yeats'continuous search for political origins and cultural traditions through the mostrecent work in postcolonial theory. She explores the complex, oftencontradictory ways Yeats' politics are refracted through his writing. Yeats'enthusiastic advocacy of the concept of nationality clashed with his distastefor the dominant and exclusive forms of Irish identity surrounding him. 

Contents: Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. That Sweet Insinuating FemineVoice: Hysterics, Peasants and the Celtic movement; 2. Fair Erin as landlord:feminity and Anglo-Irish politics in The Countess Cathleen; 3. When the mobbecomes a people: nationalism and occult theater; 4. In the bedroom of the bighouse: kindred, crisis and Anglo-Irish nationality; 5. Desiring women: feminesexuality and Irish nationality in 'A Woman Young and Old'; 6. The rule ofkindred: eugenics, Purgatory and Yeats's race philosophy; Bibliography.